Patterns

I have been interested in patterns for a long time.

Since childhood, really.

When I was a preschooler, an older brother taught me the names of all the states and their respective capitals.

We appropriated a map of the USA from a chart of the chemical elements, thanks to my father, who was a chemistry professor at a small liberal arts college in New England.

Father was a lot of other things as well.

He once described himself as a jack of all trades, and master of none.

In truth, he was rather modest, I thought.

If he didn’t know how to do something, he read about how to do it.

This in the days before the Internet, which has made it much easier.

He was a first-rate chemist and dabbled in many activities.

Like build a garage and chicken coop, and make root beer and pickles.

And can and freeze the produce from our half acre garden.

Or collect photos in an album.

Or make soap sculpture.

Or origami.

Or regale audiences with chemical magic, like turning what looked like water into wine (red, like grape juice), then back into water again.

And he wrote books.

There was little he seemed unable to do.